dumpster diving (from Punk Minneapolis)

an excerpt

(this is an excerpt from my published novel)

She frowned. “Later. I’m hungry for sausage.”

“Yeah, the whole world has gone crazy about it. As if there was nothing else to think about. We come this far in our evolution and it’s just sausage, sausage, sausage!”

The crazy nun shook her head sadly. “Young man, you make no sense. You’ll have to take that one to Jesus. You’re not working today?”

“I’m off. I was just here for some�"pop.”

She held out an old trolley token in her hand. “I guess I can’t use this for a slice?”

“Of course not. If you’re hungry and you don’t have any money, just go to the dumpster and stand in line and wait for Brett to toss out the stuff that’s expired. It shouldn’t be long before he comes, with the way he’s working right now. I mean, before he’s back out. I mean, never mind.” In the sunlight, it suddenly occurred to Raven that she was too skinny. “Come back tonight, too. Most the food goes out after we close. We make up a whole bunch of extra pizza we know won’t sell, just to throw it out. There’s always some sort of line of people waiting at the dumpster. It’s a regular party. A free dumpster diving pizza party! The only thing that makes it second class is you don’t get to put parmesan on it.”

“It sounds dirty.”

“The pizza slices are still in their boxes, and that’s all in plastic bags. It’s even still warm. We keep it separate from the other garbage. We’re not gross. You could serve it at a hospital.”

“Oh thank you.”

“Just doing my job.”

“May I thank you with a Bible verse?”

“Sure. I guess that’s what nuns do.”

She folded her hands. “Jesus said, When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, searching for rest. But when it finds none, it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’ So it returns and finds that its former home is all swept and in order. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before.”

He lowered his sunglasses enough so she could see his eyes. “Thank you.”

“God bless you.” She smiled big and walked around back to the dumpster.

(there's a dumpster in the cover pic just above the second n, ha ha)